Answer:
On the eve of the Civil War, only about 17% of Americans lived in a town of 8,000 people or more. Just three decades later, more than 30% lived in an urban setting. And, by 1900, roughly 40% of Americans lived in cities, and the number was increasing every day. Philadelphia and Chicago were home to more than a million people each, and New York City held more than two million. Towns like Omaha, Nebraska, which had been tiny hamlets in a sea of farmland back in 1860, increased their population as much as 50 times! Overall, the United States population exploded from 31 million in 1860 to 92 million in 1910. This concentration of people into cities is a process that historians call urbanization. In this lesson, we're going to explore the phenomenon, particularly as it happened in New York City in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Explanation: